No Apple Watch Ultra? No problem — here are 5 ways I use a budget fitness tracker to enhance my gym routine

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When I started regularly going to the gym several years ago, I did so without bothering with the best fitness trackers .

These gadgets, I thought, were only good for running, tracking my sleep and counting my steps.

But I’ve since learned that I was totally wrong.

Now I keep a cheap fitness tracker as a handy weightlifting companion.

That’s right, a budget option; all of the functions I need, I can use on my low-cost Xiaomi Smart Band 10 , making a purchase like the Apple Watch Ultra 3 totally unnecessary.

New to the gym, or eyeing up a new wearable purchase and wondering how it could help you? Let me walk you through five small-but-mighty functions of a cheap fitness tracker which will help you out at the gym.

1.

Timekeeping (Image credit: Future) Honestly, it’s one of the simplest features of my fitness tracker that helps my workout the most.

When you start tracking a workout on any wearable, you’ll see an on-wrist timer to tell you how much time has elapsed, and I use that timer constantly.

I use this not to see how long I work out for after the fact, but to dictate how long I exercise for during each set.

I make sure I take a consistent amount of time for each set to maintain the right level of intensity and, more importantly, rest for the same amount of time between sets.